Ebola Virus: Sierra Leone Declares Emergency to Halt Spread

byCassandra Vinograd

Doctors Without Borders (MSF) personnel wearing protective gear walk outside the isolation ward of the Donka Hospital, on July 23, 2014 in Conakry. A Liberian man has been hospitalised in Lagos with Ebola-like symptoms, but it is not yet clear if he is infected with the killer virus, Nigerian officials said on July 24. Ebola first emerged in 1976 in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, and is named after a river in that country.CELLOU BINANI / AFP - Getty Images

Sierra Leone’s president declared a state of emergency Thursday over the largest outbreak of the Ebola virus in history, drafting in security forces and placing restrictions on movement to combat the spread of the deadly virus.

Ebola has infected more than 1,200 people in three West African countries, and killed close to 700 of them. The outbreak received extra media attention when two Americans became infected, and a Liberian man with family in the United States died.

“The disease is beyond the scope of any one country, or community to defeat,” he said in a statement, adding that he has canceled a planned trip to Washington for a U.S.-Africa summit next week. “Its social, economic, psychological and security implications require scaling up measures at international, national, inter-agency and community levels.”

He said that house-to-house searches would be implemented to trace Ebola victims and quarantine them. He also said that new protocols had been established for passengers arriving and departing Lungi International Airport outside Freetown, but did not provide further details.